Four years ago Vanis Buckholz, now 11, turned a simple Earth Day project at school into a well-known recycling business called My ReCycler. Cruising the neighborhood on a bike with a trailer he picks up recyclables from regular donors. With the help of his dad and a truck they take his haul to the recycling center. He recycles more than 55,000 pounds of plastic, glass, paper and aluminum a year. He also gives 25% of his earnings to Project Hope Alliance, a charity which helps children.

Vanis Buckholz, 11, rides to his clients, picking up their recyclables. Last year, his company, My ReCycler, handled more than 55,000 pounds of plastic, glass, paper and aluminum.

Vanis Buckholz, now 11, was in first grade four years ago when he created an Earth Day project about recycling. Today, he's got a business, My ReCycler, with 25 corporate clients and a sponsor. He gives 25% of his earnings to Project Hope Alliance, a charity which helps children.

Vanis Buckholz, 11, loads his riding ompanion Potsy into his trailer. Four years ago he turned a simple Earth Day project at school into a well-known recycling business called My ReCycler.

No sweat, figured Vanis Buckholz once his teacher had given the class the assignment.

Yeah, yeah, recycling, he told himself once he got home.

It was actually the only thing he remembered from a list of things his teacher had told the class they could do as a project for Earth Day, something that would help save the planet.

“I thought, too, that it would be easiest,” he says now.

He was, it should be noted, 7-years-old then, and in the first grade. Once he figured it out, though, his parents, Dave and Evie, said they would help him, grabbed a paper Trader Joe’s bag and set it next to the pantry in the kitchen of their Corona del Mar home.

A day later, sitting on the front porch with his Dad, he called over to the neighbors across the street. Would it be OK if he could recycle for them?

Such is the manner in which a businessman and charitable benefactor is born in modern-day America.

Vanis Buckholz is 11-years-old now. His My ReCyclerbusiness last year recycled more than 55,000 pounds of aluminum, loose paper, plastic and glass. The proceeds were enough to move an Orange County family from homelessness to permanent housing.

Every day, Vanis rides his bicycle that pulls a big wagon around his neighborhood to collect recyclables, a project that was recognized by former President George W. Bush, who awarded the boy one of his national “Point of Light” awards.

“It started out as such an innocuous thing,” Dave Buckholz said as we watched his son arrange plastic bags in the wagon that was given to him in appreciation by the John Wayne Cancer Foundation. “It was just a fun thing to do.”

Once simply a classroom project, the recycling snowballed. Vanis began asking friends and still more neighbors if he could have their recyclables. The Trader Joe’s bag would no longer suffice.

He would get on his scooter, followed by his father on his bicycle, and troll the streets and alleyways in search of litter. When Vanis got his first bicycle he asked his father to attach a milk crate to it, and off he went in search of more recyclables.

At the recycling machines at the supermarket, the line of people waiting to use them stretched out the door. There would have to be another way, Dave Buckholz remembered.

“We’d go to the parks, to the beaches,” Vanis recalled. “There was trash everywhere.”

He branched out, going to a nearby senior center where he arranged not only getting its recyclables, but getting it to serve as a drop-off for others wanting the boy to take care of their recycling.

Gas stations, fitness and community centers, and numerous other businesses in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach followed. A woman, Lorraine, who heard of Vanis Buckholz, began bringing recycling from her home in Hollywood.

Dave and Evie Buckholz, as would be expected, soon were recruited to drive their son to his various pickup points, loading up their Prius and Saturn with others’ trash.

Dave would soon set aside a corner of the garage for a plywood-encased space for Vanis to store bags of recyclables, an area that on this day is nearly filled to the roof.

“At the end of the day, it is about a kid with a bike and a wagon doing something good,” Dave Buckholz said. “It resonated with people.”

About two years into the business, Dave and Evie told their son he could do more than simply help the environment. They told him about charities, why they were important, and to see if he could find one that spoke to him.

It was then that he discovered Project Hope Alliance, a Costa Mesa-based nonprofit that helps homeless children in Orange County. Last year, he raised more than $1,200 to help homeless children.

He now has 25 corporate customers, in addition to about 50 mom-and-pop shops and everyday people he counts as customers. He also now has a corporate sponsor, Indosole, a San Francisco-based company that pulls motorcycle tires from landfills in Indonesia and turns them into sandals and other footwear.

The business grew so rapidly that Dave Buckholz had to purchase a Dodge pickup. He outfitted the bed of the truck with 10-foot plywood panels to haul the average 2,000 pounds of recyclables his son collects every 10 days to a recycling yard in Santa Ana.

Much of the growth of the business happened after the mayor of Newport Beach suggested to Vanis that he build a website so others in the community could understand what he was doing and reach him.

He created myrecycler.org.

“Since we started the website and went on Facebook, it all exploded,” Vanis said.

Every day he makes pickups, on average spending about a half-hour on his bicycle. Thursday is his busy day when, for two hours, he rides with his dad to make far away pickups.

“Really, there is no limit to this business,” his father says. “The only limits we’re up against is he’s still a kid and a student, and there’s only so much time available to him.”

Vanis says his business is at its limit. He doesn’t want to bring in others to help; it is fun the way it is. He figures he will keep doing it until he leaves for college.

People now recognize him, he says.

“You’re the recycler!” he says people say when they see him on his bike. The run up and hug him, he says.

“People hug!” his father says. “We see his eyes. They get all big. They say, ‘We’re so proud of you. Keep doing this! You’re setting a good example!’

“The kindness of people has been the most remarkable part of this,” Dave Buckholz says. “It is so affirming.”

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